I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
by Cerulean Pen
Summary: And when the orphanage haunts his every dream, he'll just listen for Phineas breathing, and continue trudging on…/Or, the perspective of a permanently scarred Ferb Fletcher. Ferb-centric, minor Ferb/Phineas.


I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

Summary: And when the orphanage haunts his every dream, he'll just listen for Phineas breathing, and continue trudging on…/Or, the perspective of a permanently scarred Ferb Fletcher. Ferb-centric, minor Ferb/Phineas.

English Hurt/Comfort/Family Rated: T Chapters:1 Words: Ferb & Phineas

He knows.

Oh, Ferb Fletcher is an intelligent child, extremely creative, mechanically inclined, all these wonderful little comments written on report cards that mean positively nothing. A cunning young boy with his prim British accent, his passion for others, precisely crafting this demeanor of "the quiet one." Botchily attaching "Flynn" to his surname as if it actually means something, truly a member of a family. It doesn't. It never does.

Because Ferb Powell _knows._

He can also pretend. He'll play these trivial games, feign valor, imagining that he doesn't cower at the sight of plaid. Pretend the enclosed darkness doesn't still knot his neurons into agonizing electric rockets. Playing the ingenuous British schoolboy who cannot harm, breathes only for the sake of purity. That the humid nights propped up alongside Phineas is all that he knows, their slender fingers tracing graphite sketches. Dreaming. Phineas dreams.

Ferb nightmares.

Saint Georgina's. To no one's surprise, there is nothing saint-like about the establishment, this construction of frigid marble, jagged brick walls, these haunted cement ceilings that echo from shrieks of eternal suffering. They pray to this enormous, looming cross, but has God ever reached his kind hands? To scoop these tortured children from their filthy hell, spilling them into his heavenly lap?

No. God has not done a single thing for Ferb Powell.

That's just it. Powell. He clings to "Fletcher", creating an imperturbable shield to contain his anxiety, this lingering fear that defies mental boundaries, extending into insanity. Being Ferb Powell meant cockroach wheat, game of stones, and Misty Ellis dying in his arms. Being Ferb Fletcher was nuts and bolts, tautly knotted friendships, and cuddling semi-aquatic mammals. His own elaborate double-personality. He's scared when his vision blurs, all these summertime tans morphing into the quartz bruises.

Perhaps you just need glasses.

Before Saint Georgina's fuzzes. All he can guarantee is that he was a Powell one day, and nothing the next. The nuns scarcely ever addressed him, but when they did, Ferb was "nothing." He never spoke, he completed his daily tasks, he kept his nighttime wheezing to a minimum, crammed into the bed with Misty Ellis. _Nothing. _A fragment of oblivion that lurked for the sole purpose of hope. Opportunity. Even as torrents of jagged rocks rained upon him, he stood unremitting, because there was the chance he would _live._

Ferb doesn't live: he simply blinks and breathes and functions.

Sometimes Phineas confuses him. Ferb desires to just be buried under those blankets, the redhead jabbering at a mile a minute before he grasps a wrist, inhales deeply, pouring forth his tale of woe. Other times, Ferb furiously wishes that everyone else could endure Saint Georgina's, lay writhing in their anguish. He would smirk. Fold his lips, lower his eyes. Like Phineas gets to do. But when they're beneath that oak tree in the vivid sunlight, they exist for a reason. To make jovial these neighborhood children who have otherwise never addressed them. He doesn't always understand.

Ferb loves Phineas far too much to question.

There's Isabella that will paint her dazzling smile on when they're alone, so bright Ferb will almost believe her, until she promenades lustfully with Phineas and he remembers. _Oh, right, she's in love with my brother. _He feels no jealousy. In fact, Ferb struggles to recall the sting of emotions, such as rage, despondency, faith. Joy. They muddle within his chest, entangling his heartstrings like a child's kite cord. Oh, well. Ferb doesn't care anymore. He won't experience anymore pain. He'll be released.

The nuns would not release them. Steel itches around his ankle.

The vital oxygen was permanently tainted with grime and smoke, allowing this vile mixture into his lungs to soot his breath. Every child coughs, the midnights driving them wild with the hacking, the incessant wails as they claim another victim. A concrete headstone to mourn over, and then erase from memory. No more. There never was a Delaney Peters, or Norman Way. But Ferb believes they live on, no longer trudging wearily, but skipping merrily throughout the hallowed halls, alleviated of their frets.

Misty Ellis still lives on. Ferb will not let her go.

Candace does not love him. It is glaringly obvious that he is another bother, a second mosquito to bat away. He only provides her with the daily activity of busting, to rise above her siblings and expose them for building cheerful contraptions that do something or other, and it all blends together for him. Ferb will see her hug Phineas; she'll embrace Perry occasionally, enfold her parents, passionately kiss Jeremy Johnson. Her own motivation to be alive. This blonde "dream-boat" that is the core of Candace's bedroom décor, rarely more then a flat, glossy teenage boy he doesn't even require to know. Another paper doll in the picture book. Void, no identity, inconsequential.

So many things are now.

The worst part is the infants. When they first are strolled in, they sob vociferously, aspiring for a rubber nipple between their teeth such as before they were orphaned. But after games of stones and empty stomachs, they fall prey to silence, staring vacuously at the ceiling like a plastic child's toy. Just a heartbeat short of death. The teenagers slit their wrists, smoke cigarettes during chapel, and converse sullenly about suicide. The toddlers go pallid, these dutiful outer shells that once were tucked in a quilted bed by devoted parents. And in the middle, Ferb and Misty clean the floors, whispering, weeping, singing until their vocal cords snap.

Phineas can try, but he'll never hit a C sharp like Misty.

Lawrence Fletcher rescued Ferb. He entered that prison, peeked piteously past soiled cribs, until he found the boy kneeled over a tombstone with his eyes dry and hands wet. Immediate connection. He's whisked from arctic dusks, carried so gingerly to a red car that Ferb almost wants to be cradled like a child the rest of his life. The outside world has changed; the sky is cerulean, golden sun billows gorgeously past plush clouds, the people grin, the streets are pathways leading to adventures unknown. They have a hill home, and eat biscuits, and drink tea to clear their throats, yet Ferb still looks away when Lawrence wearily smiles.

Adults don't deserve his affection.

It's awful when Phineas begins to see past his translucent façade, inquiring over this and that and the word Powell scratched out on a birth certificate. Revert to silence. Your native tongue. Scuttle back into Saint Georgina's, into this wreckage of youth. He discovers these scrawled Post-It notes that are a shoddy substitute for a dream journal, these questions of who Misty is. It's horrible. Frightening. A trillion other synonyms for standing at the doorway, paralyzed as Phineas glances up, genuinely concerned in this warm household, pristine air, adoring family.

Maybe he should stop thinking about Misty.

Summertime tastes like cinnamon, and he can't brush the slush from his mind, as torrential teems trickled past the ceiling, freezing over his shut eyes. It aches like the teeth of a saw, lodging themselves within his veins, and when he can't breathe, he has to lay there, entirely stagnant, panicking internally until he gasps violently. Misty will notice, snuggle in closer, her feverish body transmitting heat through his skin, but never deeper. It will never reach any deeper.

But when he's a snarled web of nightmares that bind him to a supple mattress, unable to distinguish whether he's breathing, he'll look at the neon, glow-in-the-dark constellations glued to the ceiling, hear Phineas snoring faintly, feel the vibrations of Perry purring, and he'll play his little pretending game that everything is all right.

And nowadays, pretending has never felt so real.


End file.
